Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1884 — THE BAD BOY. [ARTICLE]

THE BAD BOY.

“Here, here," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the back door hurriedly and bolted it, and hid behind a barrel, "what you coming in the back door for in that manner, like a pirate of the Spanish main? My other customers don’t sneak in through the back door and hide behind things. What ails you ?” “S-h-h-h 1 If a man comes up from the street-car in about two minutes, with one coat tail torn off, and pieces of umbrella frame sticking out of hisself like porcupine quills, his hat gone, and a scared complexion on his face, and asks if you have seen a chubby-faced little boy, you drive him out doors, ’cause he isn’t responsible, ” and the boy pulled a coffee sack down off a barrel to cover himself up. “ Who is the wild man you are expecting, and what have you done?” asked the grocery man. “Sh-s-sh I It’s pa. And if he got out of the car without coming through the window, he is liable to show up here pretty quick. You see, pa has been trying to make us believe he could see just as well as he ever could, and he has quit wearing spectacles, and gets mad every time anybody suggests tllat he can’t see very well. Ma says he is ashamed to have folks think he is getting old. Sometimes I come in the room and pa snaps his fingers and says ‘hello, Bruno, good dog,’ thinking I am the dog, and when he finds out his mistake he laughs and says it was only a joke, and he says he can see as well as any man in this town. I told him some day some persons would play a joke on him and convince him that he was near-sighted, and he said they might try all the jokes they wanted to on him. Well pa is awful polite to ladies, and for fear he will pass some lady that he knows, and not speak to her, he speaks to all of ’em. Some of ’em get cross to have a stranger speak to them, but pa has such an innocent, benevolent, vacant sort of a look when he smiles, that they go on, thinking he has escaped from some asylum. Well, he was in a street car, and on the other side of the car was an old maid, with a pug dog in her lap, curled up like a baby. I see pa was getting his eyes sot on the woman and the dog, but 1 knew ha couldn’t make out whether it was a baby she had or not, so I wliispered to pa that it was too bad to carry babies on street cars, poor little things. That was enough for pa. He bit like a bass. He began to look benevolent, and smiled at the lady just as though he lived next door to her, and she looked sort of cross, but pa could not see that, and he smiled again and leaned over toward her and pointed to the dog and asked: ‘How old is the little thing ?’ Well, I thought I should just melt and run r.’ght through the perforated seat of the car. The woman said it. was only eleven months old, but she looked as though she didn’t know us it was any of his business, any way. I tried to get pa to change the subject and talk with me, but when he gets to talking with a woman that settles it, and he told me to hush up and look out of the window at the Then pa smiled again and got one eye on the lady and one on the supposed baby, which she had wrapped a shawl around, and said: ‘Little cne always been healthy, I suppose ?’ The woman snapped out that it had always been healthy enough, except when it was cutting teeth it had a sort of distemper. The other passengers began to look at pa and smile, and the lady was beginning to blush, and I could -see distapt mutterings of a cyclone, and I pulled pa’s sleeve and told him I wouldn’t talk to strangers that way if I was him, but pa he punched me in the rib with his elbow, and told me to mind my own business, and I went to the end of the car near the door so as to get out quick in case of an alarm of fire. Pa returned to the assault, and it made me perspire. ‘ls it a boy or girl ?’ said pa, and the lady’s face colored up and she pulled the strap to stop the car. Just as the car stopped pa got up, and in his politest manner he said, as he held out his hands, let me help you with the baby.’ Well, you’d a dide. You would have just laid right down in the straw* in the car and blatted. When the driver opened the door I flew out, and just then I looked in and the dog had gQt mad at pa when he put out his hands, and had grabbed pa’s hand, and was chewing his mitten and growling, and the lady called pa an old wretch, and said he ought to be arrested for going around insulting unprotected females, and I saw her umbrella go up in the air and come down on pa’s head, and pa yelled to somebody to take the dog off. Tha woman came out of the car on a gallop, holding the dog by the leg, and the dog had one of pa’s buckskin mittens in its mouth, chewing for all that was out. When she struck the street she told me to. c-11 a policeman and have the old tramp arrested, and I said ‘yessum,’ and she went off with the dog under her arm. I asked pa if I should follow his lady friend and get his mitten away from her little baby, that he was using to cut teeth on, and pa looked so mad, as he told me to go to gehenna, that I got off the car and fcame here, and left him picking pieces of umbrella out of his necktie, and explaining to the other passengers that he knew the dog wasn’t a baby all the time. Say, can you see how I was to blame about pa’s misfortune?” “I can’t see as you are to blame,” said the grocery man, as he dipped a quart of cranberries out of the barrel behind which the boy was hid; “your pa is one of those meh that knows it all and don’t, allow anybody to tell him anything. If he had listened to your adVicehewould have kept out of trouble. I think some men ought to have a boy for -a guardian. But, say! How would you like to have some fun ? I have got a big pile of potatoes in the cellar, and they are beginning to sprout. Let’s you and I go down cellar aad pull off our coats and just have a glorious old time picking those potatoes over and pulling off the sprouts. Hurrah! Come on," and the grocery man laughed and run his thumb into the boy’s ribs and started for the cellar. “No, not any fun for Hennery,” said the boy, as he looked out to see if his pa was in sight. “I think too much fun is not good for boys. If you want your

potatoes looked over you will have to hire somebody to do it. Sprouting potatoes is work, and yon can’t make it pass for fun, unless you strike some fool boy that don’t know you are playing it on him. You old hypocrites think boys are fools. Ever since I turned grindstone for a man once all the afternoon for fun, and got so tired I couldn’t walk, I have decided to pick out my own fun. When a man unfolds a scheme to me to have fun, and I see it is a put up job to get me to work for nothing and call it fun, I pass,” and the boy went out to see if his pa got off tbe car.— Peek’s Sun.